Mystery booms plague New Jersey residents

The sounds have been heard for about a week.

Law enforcement agencies have been left baffled by a spate of unexplained explosions in Fair Lawn.

It is a phenomenon that has been reported in several countries over the last few years and now residents of a small town in New Jersey have become the latest to hear a series of mysterious booms which some have likened to the sound a canon might make when it is being fired.

Local resident Danielle McManus and her family were among the witnesses to come forward.

“We were, like, looking at each other like, ‘What was that?’” she told CBS News. “If we didn’t know any better, it almost sounds like a cannon. It was so deep and just like, echoey.”

Fair Lawn police have been searching the area for clues but have so far come up empty.

Friday night was far from the first nervous one for residents of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, who have been plagued by loud booming sounds for about a week.

As CBS2’s Dave Carlin reported, the source of the nuisance is a mystery.

“We were, like, looking at each other like, ‘What was that?’” said Danielle McManus.

It happened twice in the past week to McManus and her family. While inside their home in a usually very quiet Fair Lawn neighborhood, things went bump in the night.

“If we didn’t know any better, it almost sounds like a cannon,” McManus said, “It was so deep and just like, echoey.”

Elsewhere in the neighborhood along the Passaic River, residents say they have heard loud booms as early as 6 p.m. and as late as 2 a.m..

“It was, ‘Pssh, pssh, pssh,’” one young boy said.

“I was like, ‘Grr! Grr! Brr!’ like that,” another said.

“I heard the noise, so I came out here,” added Susan Kuqi of Fair Lawn. ‘Sometimes, you know, people dump garbage. It sounded like a garbage truck.”

Fair Lawn police searched for the source of the noises up and down the Passaic, including along the Paterson side.

Initially, they thought the noise was coming from this a PG&E plant across the river from the neighborhoods where the noise complaints came in.

Construction is going on there, but a neighbor closest to the plant said it is not the source of the booms.

“No explosions,” said the neighbor, Stan Matthews.

Fair Lawn Mayor John Cosgrove confirmed PG&E had nothing to do with it, and said the noises are a mystery.

“I’ve had everything from people telling me about fireworks to aliens,” Cosgrove said.

So Cosgrove has extra officers deployed — more eyes and ears for when whatever it is disturbs the peace again.